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Fall migration & flock integration.

When we lived in town we attracted a nice variety of birds with our various feeders, small pond, bird baths, and garden.

Once in a while during the fall migration a hawk would visit the feeders. I remember looking out the kitchen window in awe of that beautiful bird and feeling badly for the prey . . . Mother Nature at work.

My appreciation of hawks has changed a bit with this year’s migration. We lost our little Blue Wyandotte to one. 🙁 This was particularly sad since she’s the little hen that hatched a small clutch of eggs a couple of months ago for Susan, owner of Cluck the Chicken Store in Paoli.

Hawk migration wasn’t our only issue this fall. We noticed something big fly by the window and imagine our surprise to see a Blue Heron perched on the bantam’s coop. I manged to get a picture from inside the solarium before it took off. Within a few minutes it returned to our pond, we then realized it had eaten the fish. It’s too bad we lost the gold fish, but it sure was cool to see such a big and beautiful bird just outside the window.

With our move to the country we are attracting a much larger variety of birds than we would ever have seen in town. So even with the losses it’s great being in the country!

Remember these little cuties?

Well their big girls now. . .

opps and one boy!

Lil’ Red Roo

This is only the second time we’ve integrated young chickens into our main flock, and as with last year’s spring hatch, it went incredibly well.

Lil’ Red watching over his flock

Although, we definitely had a segregation issue when the Delawares realized the hardware cloth that divided the coop was gone. They made it clear that the front roost was theirs!

Now when we do the evening head count before closing their run they are all intermingled into one big happy flock.Well it can still be a little raucous at bed time, but that’s what it’s like in the chicken world. 😉